India registered 136 cybercrime cases every day in 2020: NCRB data

Cybercrimes in the country have increased four times or 306 per cent in the past four years. In 2016, 12,317 cases of cybercrime were registered and in 2020 this number increased to 50,035. This means that India registered 136 cybercrime cases every day in 2020, according to the National Crime Records Bureau.

India's cybercrime rate, or the number of cybercrimes per one lakh of population, also shot up by 270 per cent in four years — in 2016, it was 1 and 2020 saw it climb up to 3.7.

The NCRB data revealed that, on an average, 65.81 per cent of cases were pending investigation at the end of each year. This is also because cases from previous years that have not been taken up for investigation overflow onto the next year. An average of 45.57 per cent of cases taken up for investigation in a particular year were those that were pending investigations from the previous year.

In 2016, 24,187 cybercrime cases were up for investigation and, of these, 11,870 were from 2015, 14,973 were still pending investigation at the end of the year and 9,213 were disposed of by the police. In 2020, the cases up for investigation rose to 103,000, and half of these or 51.1 per cent (53,157) were from the previous year, 71.29 per cent or 74,142 were still pending investigation at the end of the year.

 

IndiaSpend, NCRB